Michael Bay told USA Today that, having made the incredibly successful and yet strangely lackluster Transformers 4: Age of Extinction, he plans to take his movie-making in a new, exploding robot-less direction. But please don't bother to wipe your brow in relief quite yet.

Bay has announced his departure from the giant robot movie series a few times, including after Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon, where he emphatically denied he'd ever return to make another. You can see how that ended up; and given that TF4 has made over a billion dollars despite its mediocrity, it's hardly impossible that Paramount could persuade Bay to return, and when I say "persuade" I mean fill a giant warehouse with gold coins so Bay can swim around in it a la Scrooge McDuck.

Honestly, it seems like whenever Bay gets done with a TF movie he's bored with the franchise, and a year or so later enough time has passed that he's willing to take a massive paycheck to bother to make another one, although he seems to be half-assing his attempts a bit more each time. I'd lay even money this is exactly what happens again.